CR914
Region 5 Championship
Regatta Report

Greater Tulsa Model Yacht Club

September 16, 2001

The Greater Tulsa Model Yacht Club sponsored this years Region 5 Championships September 15th and 16th. Seventeen sailors from Colorado, Minnesota, Texas and Oklahoma participated in this year's regatta. Saturday dawned in bright sunshine and southeast breezes. Registration and weighing of boats began at 9:00 and was wrapped up by 10:30. A few boats needed some added weight while a couple of minor discrepancies were handled with some channel adjusting to eliminate a couple of conflicts. After the skipper's meeting at 11:30, all 17 boats were ready to sail.

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The promotion relegation system was used for Saturday's races with two preliminary races being used to seed the fleet and shake down the racers before sailing for keeps began. As we began the afternoon racing the skies became overcast and things cooled off a little as the wind held and we wound into the system. By one thirty the skies were quite dark and we were certain to get wet. By two we had sailed 12 heats and 6 complete races when the skies opened and it got too treacherous to walk the course. We postponed racing for 30 minutes, then another thirty and then again until 3:30. Since the sailing instructions would not allow sailing after four, we decided to call it a day at that time and use the results from the six races to establish the fleets for Sundays racing.

With the forecast for rain again on Sunday, all racers were warned at the Saturday evening dinner to come to the pond prepared to sail in the rain on Sunday. Sunday dawned grey and drizzly but no downpours on the radar. Since the wind had shifted to the southeast, we decided to set the racecourse on the opposite side of the pond and hope for it to hold for the day. As racing began, the weather lightened and the breeze built to a perfect 7 to 10 mph and racing began with the gold fleet starting first and the silver fleet following two minutes behind on the same course. This forced the race committee to keep the starting line closed for both fleets but made for some interesting and tactical racing within each fleet and between the fleets as the boats converged on the same course. This strategy allowed each fleet to race fourteen races within the specified time frame, starting at 10:00 and finishing at 2:30 with a 45-minute break for lunch.

At the end of the day we saw extremely competitive racing in the gold fleet with the top 5 within 10 points of one another. Local sailor Harvey Baker went home with the big trophy and 31 points. The next three places were tied with 40 points. Utilizing the tie breaking system of most 1st, 2nd etc, Dave Ayers of the Tulsa club was second, Steve Lang from Evergreen CO was third with Tony Johnson, 1995 CR national champ, in 4th with local sailor, Jim Stinson in 5th with 41 points. 

Following are the results of both silver and gold fleets. Dave Goebel also was in attendance sailing a borrowed boat and enjoying the regatta. At the Sunday morning skipper's meeting he stated that this was a bell weather event with this being the first AMYA sanctioned regatta ever held in Oklahoma. As it turned out, it was a great regatta for GTMYC and for Oklahoma with the weather holding off, and the trophies being distributed to the winners by 3:30. 

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